Between Terror and Humor
[Alfred and Guinevere] is a delectable little book about two children, a deft and funny creation of a high quality somewhere between the terror-haunted humor of Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica and the placid, presumably unself-conscious amusements of Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters. James Schuyler's story consists entirely of conversations and excerpts from a diary kept by Guinevere….
Guinevere's brother Alfred is perhaps three or four years younger than she, but the two often manage to bridge the chasm of time between them with a mutual respect as generous as the sympathetic understanding with which they tolerate the adults in their lives…. These children, quite evidently a cut above the level of their friends, are capable of outlandish fantasies and defiances and hatreds, but they have a clear strain of sense, of charity even, of the ability to respond to sense and charity when, as sometimes happens, these virtues are practiced among grownups. (p. 86)
Edwin Kennebeck, "Between Terror and Humor," in Commonweal (copyright © 1958 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.), Vol. LXVIII, No. 3, April 18, 1958, pp. 86-7.
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